United Airlines is offering a very inexpensive fare of $359 round-trip between Boston and Hamburg, Germany. Fly in October & November, maybe later also.

The routing for this very low fare goes through Newark. From Hamburg you can take other ultra-low-cost European airlines (e.g., AirBerlin) to other destinations, including those with more temperate winter climates.

If you have status on one airline or hotel chain, you may be able to have another airline or hotel chain match it. So, for example, if you are Gold on American Airlines and are a nobody on AirBerlin, you can request a status match on AB before your next flight and receive the privileges that your new (temporary) AB status grants.

This post from Dan’s Deals is a very useful summary.

http://www.dansdeals.com/archives/87542

The airlines covered in the blog post are AirBerlin, Alaska, American, Delta, JetBlue, Turkish, United and Virgin America.

The hotel chains covered are Hilton, Hyatt and Starwood.

If you have any airline/hotel status and plan to fly or stay in any of those named brands, you are in luck!

As a tall passenger, my favorite feature of AirBerlin is the (extra-cost) availability of their XL (extra legroom) seats in Coach. But you have to be vigilant…weeks after we were ticketed, they did a schedule change and put me into a standard seat. A phone call to their courteous call-center man got that rectified, but it was just luck that I noticed the seat change.